Academic reading format preferences and behaviors among university students worldwide: A comparative survey analysis

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Academic reading format preferences and behaviors among university students

worldwide: A comparative survey analysis

Diane Mizrachi^1☯*, Alicia M. Salaz^2☯, Serap Kurbanoglu^3‡, Joumana Boustany^4‡, on behalf of the ARFIS Research Group^¶

1 Charles E. Young Library, University of California, Los Angeles, California, United States of America, 2 University Libraries, Carnegie Mellon University, Doha, Qatar, 3 Information Management Department, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey, 4 Institut Francilien d’Inge´nierie des Services, Universite´ Paris-Est Marne-la-Valle´e, Paris, France

☯These authors contributed equally to this work.

‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

¶ Membership of the ARFIS group of researchers is provided in the Acknowledgments.

*[email protected]

Abstract

This study reports the descriptive and inferential statistical findings of a survey of academic reading format preferences and behaviors of 10,293 tertiary students worldwide. The study hypothesized that country-based differences in schooling systems, socioeconomic development, culture or other factors might have an influence on preferred formats, print or electronic, for academic reading, as well as the learning engagement behaviors of students. The main findings are that country of origin has little to no relationship with or effect on reading format preferences of university students, and that the broad majority of students worldwide prefer to read academic course materials in print. The majority of participants report better focus and retention of information presented in print formats, and more frequently prefer print for longer texts. Additional demographic and post-hoc analysis suggests that format preference has a small relationship with academic rank. The relationship between task demands, format preferences and reading comprehension are discussed. Additional outcomes and implications for the fields of education, psychology, computer science, information science and human-computer interaction are considered.

Introduction

Instant information, communication, and connected information devices are now ubiquitous in many societies around the world. Today’s college students, in particular, have lived most or all of their lives in the modern information age. According to a Pew Research Study published in 2015, 92% of adolescents in the United States go online daily through their phones and other electronic devices [1]. Statistics from Australia, the UK and the United States indicate that children of all ages have steadily been increasing the amount of time spent each day engaged with electronic media over recent decades [2]. To quantify, the Kaiser Family a1111111111

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Citation: Mizrachi D, Salaz AM, Kurbanoglu S, Boustany J, on behalf of the ARFIS Research Group (2018) Academic reading format preferences and behaviors among university students worldwide: A comparative survey analysis. PLoS ONE 13(5): e0197444.https://doi.

org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197444

Editor: Mitchell Rabinowitz, Fordham University, UNITED STATES

Received: December 6, 2017 Accepted: May 2, 2018 Published: May 30, 2018

Copyright:©2018 Mizrachi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: Parts of this research have been supported by funding from an internal grant by the Librarians Association of the University of California-Los Angeles. Parts of this research have been supported by seed funding from Carnegie Mellon University under an internal grant titled

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Foundation has found that American youths aged 8–18 spend approximately 7.5 hours a day using electronic media [3], up from 6.43 hours in 2006 [2]. Based on these data, it might be natural to assume that college students who have grown up in this digital information environment would be more comfortable reading their academic materials electronically rather than in print. However, studies of students’ preferred format presentation show that this is frequently untrue.

Current knowledge about the suitability and impact of reading formats, whether print or electronic, for different purposes including learning, comprehension and usability is far from complete. In an era where e-textbook adoptions and blended/online learning components are expanding rapidly across higher education, there are indications that many university students today prefer to read academic materials in print and, even more pertinently for educators, believe they actually learn better from print materials. Higher education administrators and learning designers need to know who these readers are, the extent to which they use or prefer certain academic content formats, and the behavioral and learning implications of these preferences.

What we do know about differences in reading in print and electronic formats suffers from problems of scale and diversity. Studies on reading format preferences and behaviors to date have included anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred participants, and the differing study designs and approaches make it a challenge to aggregate findings or distinguish clear patterns across study groups. Like most research across many subject fields, existing studies regarding print and digital reading preferences and behaviors also most commonly take data from participant samples in a short list of Western countries. While there are important reasons for this related to logistics and feasibility, data taken from geographically homogenous subsets of users leaves us with a limited ability to make reasonable inferences about human experience and behavior across much of the globe. Particularly where questions of innate versus environmental influences on the processing of text and cognition are concerned, we felt it important to identify and test assumptions about reading preferences with a larger and more diverse global sample than has been employed in previous studies. Variations in a sample that includes participants from countries with broadly different socioeconomic development levels, technological readiness levels, and schooling systems could be analyzed to help inform and develop models and hypotheses about “when, for whom, and for what purposes one mode of delivery (i.e., print or digital) might prove more beneficial than another”[4](p1009).

To that end, this study presents data about reading format preferences gathered from 10,293 college and university students in 21 countries worldwide using an original validated instrument. The Academic Reading Format International Study instrument (ARFIS) gathers self-reported reading format preferences, either print or electronic, and tests for the consistency of preferences across countries and languages. It also gathers data on the extent to which respondents say they utilize print and digital formats and their associated tools, and whether the language of publication (native or foreign to the respondent) influences their format preferences. It was developed and disseminated to answer the following research questions:

1. What format, print or electronic, do university students prefer for the majority of their academic course materials?

2. Do format preferences and behaviors vary by country?

3. Does the length of a text influence format preferences?

4. Is the language of the reading a confounding factor in evaluating format preferences?

Novice and Expert Information Behavior in the Arab Gulf.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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The findings of this study are compared to previous findings and the implications for tertiary educators, publishers and technology developers are discussed.

This study defines and approaches reading in a particular manner. While we engage with text in various ways every day, many types of engagement do not amount to the type of “reading” we seek to understand in this study. For example, skimming, scanning, or quickly extract- ing factual data from news headlines, emails or text messages are activities and purposes that involve decoding and interpreting words and might be called “reading” in an everyday context, but for the purposes of this research are not included as an object of study. Rather, our focus is the type of reading typically conducted in a tertiary academic setting—engagement with text that involves “the retrieval of previously acquired [mental] schema to assist the processing and understanding of new unfamiliar information”[5](p55). In other words, learning from text.

In terms of “digital reading” or “e-reading”, then, we have in mind the activity of learning from text presented through any kind of electronic format, whether produced as a native electronic text, or scanned into a PDF from print and accessed via computer screen, dedicated e- reader, tablet or other digital hardware. This conception of reading as learning from text underpins the inquiry into how students at university prefer to read academic texts and course materials.

Literature review

To date, a variety of reading preference studies have yielded mixed conclusions on the preferred format for reading among college and university students, with some finding a preference for print [6–11] and others finding a preference for electronic formats [12]. The differences in conclusions are difficult to explain given the range of tasks and approaches to inquiry found across studies, and explanatory theories or models of learning and behavior that can account for these findings and their differences are limited. Preference for electronic reading may occur in circumstances where texts are shorter; where reading purposes are different, as in reading for leisure or casual information consumption; or where a high value is placed on the affordability or portability afforded by digital texts. For instance, Wang and Bai found that undergraduate students tended to use e-books only for leisure reading and not for academic study[13]. Some researchers have suggested that environmental concerns with paper and printing drive preferences towards e-reading [14], and others have captured user attitudes towards print that seem deeply rooted in identity as a reader and nostalgia for hard copy reading [15] Still other studies have documented fundamental usability problems with e-formats which seem to drive print preference, such as difficulties with eyestrain [14], scrolling [16], and the usability of text engagement tools such as highlighting and notetaking [17]. Some have even suggested gender may play a role in format preference [18].

At the same time, cognitive studies over the last decade suggest that the presentation format of a text, either print or electronic, affects deep learning strategies, retention, and focus capabil- ities [19,18,20–22]. In a variety of experiments, print format has been found to offer an advan- tage for learning and remembering information conveyed in a text. In their recent systematic review of format-linked reading comprehension research, Singer and Alexander present evidence that these print advantages may be most pronounced where the processing and recall of more detailed, granular information is concerned, and when dealing with lengthier texts [4].

The learning and recall advantages evidenced in print reading may diminish when dealing with shorter texts or in circumstances where the broad themes or ideas of a text is all that needs to be understood or retained in memory [17]. The reasons for these differences are far from conclusive, but may have to do with how the layout and presentation of texts facilitates the construction of a mental map of the text and its overall structure [23], how the features or

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usability of contemporary e-reading platforms burden cognitive processes [16], or how the tac- tile features of print texts aid in memory encoding [24]. In the context of learning from text in a higher education setting, it is plausible that the perceived ease with which a format facilitates focus and memory might also drive preference. In at least some cases, however, stated user format preference and actual comprehension performance conflict [12], suggesting that respondents either are not aware of or do not always place high or sole importance on learning performance in making format decision.

While limited, certain theoretical perspectives have been presented as helpful lenses for interpreting these varied findings around user format preferences and identifying research directions. Mizrachi [25] suggests that Zipf’s principle of least effort [26] may help explain how and why readers report different format preferences in relation to different reading tasks and material types. This principle states that an actor will take the path of least effort or least resis- tance in order to achieve minimally acceptable results. In the context of selecting a format for reading, this principle predicts that readers would balance the ease, cost and convenience of electronic reading with the time and effort required to extract enough informational value from the text for the task at hand. If all that is required from the text is an enjoyable experience to pass the time while on vacation, as in reading a pulp fiction novel, a reader might well prefer an inexpensive, lightweight electronic version, as it gets the job done and the value placed by the reader on complex learning and retention of the information is low. If, however, a reader must concentrate carefully to learn deeply and recall granular levels of detail from texts, as when constructing a literature review for a thesis, they might find it less effortful to learn and accomplish the task using a print medium text. This is a broad principle which has been used to predict and explain a wide range of human behaviors across fields, including the information sciences, but is limited in that it lacks the specificity needed to account for the nuances of format preferences in different contexts.

Eshet-Alkalai and Geri [18] present a theory of information economics perspective which suggests that format preference is impacted by the economic value the reader places upon the reading, and can therefore vary depending on the context and desired outcome of the reading activity. It is a microeconomic perspective that looks at format choice through the lens of effi- ciency and game theory, considering the unique properties of information and the ways that information is valued as compared to other goods and services. This more domain-specific approach, which distinguishes informational products from other types of rational user or consumer-choice models, is useful to an extent for considering the factors driving user format choices. However, in academic settings, economic models can be limited in their explanatory power given the fact that the end-users of information, students, are not commonly the ones who choose readings, such as textbooks or other course materials, and as end-users, they may or may not directly pay for these materials. These factors undoubtedly distort the valuation of these resources and may introduce difficulty in quantifying or predicting perceived value.

These and other models and perspectives are helpful, but to the best of our knowledge there is not currently a cohesive theoretical basis for reconciling the sometimes contradictory findings outlined in this review. The uncertainty surrounding when, where and for whom print or digital reading formats better serve learning are of particular concern for educators and those involved with instructional design. Moreover, rapid changes occurring in the digital realm with regard to formats, platforms, costs, and resulting user behaviors, make a systematic and continuous data gathering program essential to understanding the use of, and improving the technology behind, digital formats for reading in the coming years.

Many of the ideas around which formats readers prefer and why can be explored further by analyzing format preference data from a broad international sample. For instance, ideas of personal identity as a reader and nostalgia for print reading are culturally linked and might be

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thought to be more prevalent in countries with a strong “book culture”. The socioeconomic development and technological readiness of countries might indirectly influence preferences by way of variables such as affordability and access to print or electronic formats. Device prev- alence and experience levels linked to national educational systems and styles are potentially factors that correlate to greater print or electronic reading preferences. A broad, global dataset provides a rich opportunity for analysis of the factors driving format preferences in the context of higher education.

To that end, this study presents data from the first iteration of the academic reading format international study (ARFIS). The ARFIS instrument is designed to be used repeatedly to con- tribute empirical data to understandings of academic reading format preferences and behavior and their changes over time. It systematically gathers data in the form of reader self-reports that lend insight into how technological developments and instructional design approaches may be affecting and changing readers’ choices, in a manner that enables broad comparisons across an international sample. Data from this study presents a current snapshot of what the format preferences and self-reported behaviors among university students are, how they compare internationally, and how they compare to previously gathered data. This data lends insight into what students believe about their own learning from print versus digital formats, what factors may influence these preferences and what trends are occurring over time.

Materials and methods Questionnaire design

The ARFIS questionnaire was developed based on a survey instrument used to examine UCLA undergraduates’ reading format preferences [25]. That instrument was piloted and refined before use, and subsequently extended by Mizrachi, Boustany, and Kurbanoglu into 16 Likert- style statements, six demographic questions, and an open-ended qualitative prompt for further comments. The instrument and study are designed to investigate a particular type of reader with a particular purpose—university students engaged in academic reading.

Students respond through an electronic platform, LimeSurvey, to eight statements related to format preferences both in general and under specific conditions, such as for shorter and longer readings, as well as five questions regarding their learning engagement behaviors across formats. Because in the global higher education landscape, students may study and be required to read texts in a lanaguage which is not their native language, three further questions seek to uncover any relationship between reading/publication language and format preferences. These statements, grouped by dimension, are:

Dimension 1: Format Preference

• I remember information from my course readings best when I read them from printed pages.

• It is more convenient to read my assigned readings electronically than to read them in print.

• I prefer to have all my course materials in print format.

• If an assigned reading is 7 pages or more, I prefer to read it in print.

• If an assigned reading is less than 7 pages, I prefer to read it electronically.

• I prefer electronic textbooks over print textbooks.

• I can focus on the material better when I read it in print.

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• I prefer to read my course readings electronically.

Dimension 2: Learning Engagement (self-reported behaviors)

• I usually highlight and notate my printed course readings.

• I usually highlight and annotate my electronic readings.

• I am more likely to review my course readings (after I’ve read them at least once) when they are in print.

• I prefer to print out my course readings rather than read them electronically.

• I like to make digital copies of my printed course materials.

Dimension 3: Language

• I prefer to read course readings which are in my native language elecronically rather than print.

• I prefer reading foreign language material in print rather than electronic format.

• My preferred reading format, electronic or print, depends on the language of the reading.

Starred statements () are reverse-scored for analysis.

Demographic questions concerning country of origin, gender, age, visual limitations, academic major, and academic rank are employed to ensure diversity in the sample response but also to enable demographic analysis of response patterns. Because of the possible effects of electronic reading device features on user preference and reading comprehension implicated in prior studies[4], the instrument includes one statement concerning which devices participants use for electronic academic reading and allows multiple responses. Each Likert-style response item on the instrument offers five responses including Strongly Agree, Agree, Dis- agree, Strongly Disagree, and Neither Agree nor Disagree, and each item offers space for explanatory comments from participants. Likert-style items include opposing statements to attempt to minimize acquiescence bias in responses, although the balance of such statements is not perfectly even. Opposing question items are also constructed to avoid the use of double- negatives and use slightly different sentence constructions and terminology. These design con- siderations are intended to limit redundancy and the length of the instrument and maximize the number of complete responses.

The instrument items are assessed based on the responses for internal consistency using Cronbach’s alpha.

For Dimension 1, Format Preference, the subscale alpha based on 10293 valid responses across 8 items is 0.85. Each item in the scale contributes to a higher alpha for the scale as a whole and the corrected item-total correlations for each item range from 0.485 to 0.757. There- fore, the scale is reliable and internally consistent, and all items in this dimension have been retained in analysis.

Extending this scale to include statements pertaining to Dimension 2, Learning Engage- ment, improves the overall alpha scale to 0.87 over 10293 valid responses. However, item-by- item analysis reveals that the statement “I like to make digital copies of my printed course materials” is internally inconsistent (r = 0.202) with many of the other scale items and the scale total itself, and cannot be justified with face or theoretical validity. We have therefore dropped this item from the analysis, improving the final scale alpha to 0.882 across 12 items.

The corrected item-total correlations for each of the remaining 12 items range from 0.391 to 0.711.

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For Dimension 3, Language, the first two statements do not correlate particularly well with each other, with an alpha of 0.449 and Spearman-Brown coefficient of .451. For an indication of the extent to which participants believe language matters to their format preferences, we have focused primarily on the third statement (“My preferred reading format. . .depends on the language of the reading”) as an exploratory standalone indicator.

Ethical compliance

The institutional review board authorized under the Office of Human Research Protection Program at the University of California, Los Angeles reviewed and approved the research plan.

Approval was also granted by all participating institutions which require ethical clearance.

Because data was gathered anonymously from participants with no personal identifiers col- lected in the process, no written consent was obtained from participants. Participants were informed of the study’s details and purposes through the LimeSurvey platform and completion of the survey is taken as implied consent.

Participant recruitment

Researchers at partner institutions making up the international research team were recruited from personal and professional networks to help disseminate the questionnaire to university students worldwide, including translating the questionnaire from English into the local language of instruction if necessary. Student participants ranging from first-year through the doctoral level were recruited through their local institutions by email in 2014, 2015 and 2016. The study population is restricted to enrolled university students at any tertiary level. The purpose of the study is to assess the preferences and self-reported behaviors of readers engaged in learning from text, and the outcomes are intended to aid stakeholders in adult learning environ- ments regarding educational design and practice. For this reason, the study is targeted at a population engaged in routine reading for learning—university students—and specifically addresses the use of academic course materials, not other types of reading. Participants from a broadly diverse international sample were sought in order to lend greater validity and reliability to the findings.

Data analysis

Several of the researchers involved in data gathering have conducted separate independent analyses of subsets of the data gathered in their respective countries [6,27–32]. This study ana- lyzes results from the complete international amalgamated quantitative data, relates descriptive and inferential statistical outcomes to show the worldwide trends uncovered in this study.

Qualitative data gathered as part of this study is reserved for the use of local researchers only and is not reported here, in part due to the challenges involved in translating and aggregating these responses.

Quantitative data has been cleaned and analyzed twice using Excel and SPSS. Incomplete and unsubmitted responses were excluded from analysis. “Incomplete” refers to instances where participants left the survey early without responding to all format questions presented.

Some of the questionnaires have missing gender data because the version of the questionnaire distributed did not present this item, and the otherwise complete responses of these participants were included and analyzed. Some responses include missing or unrealistic age data, because this item was presented as an open response. These otherwise complete responses are also included in the analysis. Descriptive statistics of participant responses to each question are presented using radial graphs for comparison. These descriptive graphics have been presented using the same scaling and increments in order to provide a broad comparative view of

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international trends. Descriptive statistical data is also presented in tabular form for ease of reading, and responses to Likert-style items have been collapsed from five categories to three representing those who agree to any extent with the statement, those who neither agree nor disagree, and those who disagree to any extent with the statement.

The 12-item format preference scale has been combined and presented using a median score for each participant. These scores have also been collapsed into the same three categories for reporting to give an overall descriptive indicator of format preference. The descriptive statistics address research questions about the nature of student preferences and the extent to which they self-report engagement in particular learning behaviors with text and the preva- lence of types of digital devices they self-report using for academic reading. We have presented the findings here collectively as a scale total as well as item-by-item in order to facilitate a more granular view of the data and to more clearly demonstrate some of the differences across items.

Inferential statistical analysis of participant responses sought to confirm whether or not participants exhibit different format preferences or self-reported behavior patterns linked to country of origin and language of reading, and to estimate the significance of any such patterns. Data was analyzed using non-parametric statistical tests and the Likert-style responses have been treated as ordinal rather than scale data. Estimates of effect size for non-parametric tests [33] are given to illustrate the strength of differences between groups.

Demographic data about students’ gender, academic rank, and fields of study was gathered to assess the representativeness of the participant sample. Demographic data about students’

particular fields of study were reviewed and coded thematically according to Web of Science subject classifications in order to simplify the data and enable comparison.

Students in China responded to an inverted statement for item 10 of the instrument. The original survey statement “I prefer electronic textbooks over print,” was translated into the Chinese questionnaire as “I prefer print textbooks over electronic.” We have elected to retain this data in the analysis, and have inverted the original responses to this item in order to ana- lyze them along with the larger dataset.

Post-hoc, randomized out-of-sample exploratory analysis of the results was also conducted to identify any potential patterns associated with a preference for print or digital reading of academic course materials that had not been previously hypothesized by the researchers. A random sample of 50% of the data (subset A) was selected for observation and analysis, and several new hypotheses were then tested against the other 50% of the data (subset B). Those newly generated hypotheses, supported and unsupported by subset B, are presented here to inform further research. Because of the size of the dataset, all inferential analysis was conducted looking at associations where p<0.01. No analysis was conducted below this threshold.

It is our assumption, again based on the large size of the dataset, that true effects are likely to be observable in this range and unlikely to be missed, while spurious effects would more likely be observable in the .01<p<.05 range.

Results

Data reported in this analysis, gathered between 2014 and 2016, includes 10,293 complete survey responses from college and university students in 21 countries.

Demographic analysis

Respondents are 67.47% female, 28.9% male, while 3.63% of respondents have no gender data.

Male and female respondents across the full dataset showed statistically unique responses to the scale. Analysis by Mann-Whitney U generated test stasticsU= 7,745,738,W= 12,172,538,

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Z= -20.704, withη²= .043 and p<.0005. This suggests that the overall effect size is very small, and that 4.3% of the variability in responses is attributed to gender.

98.7% of participants range in age from 18 to 65, and 66.7% of all respondents (n = 6870) are 18–24 years old.

16.4% of respondents (n = 1686) indicated having some kind of visual impairment.

Enrollment status of respondents include first, second, third and fourth-year undergraduates (20.1%, 18.9%, 18.1%, 12.0% of respondents respectively), 21.9% master’s students, 5.7%

doctoral students, and another 3.3% who report as “other.” Social science majors are the largest group of respondents (54.5%), followed by science majors (31.6%), and arts and humanities or other majors (13.9%).Table 1lists the countries represented in this study, the number (n) and percentages of participants in each country sample, and the institutions from which the data was gathered.

Participants reported which device(s) they use to read electronic academic material, and laptops are the most common answer among respondents (80.9%). Phones (36.83%), desktops (30.54%) and tablets (28.43%) are also popular devices. 4.34% of respondents report that they do not read material electronically. One finding of interest is that Chinese students’ use of phones for reading (73.7%) is double the median percentage of the amalgamated group (36.83%). Chinese participants also featured the highest percentages for use of tablets, e-readers and audio applications. This could reflect a broader integration of electronic technology in the Chinese educational culture, even though their participant format preferences do not vary to a large statistical effect from the rest of the respondents.

Table 1. Representative institutions and country sample sizes.

Country n % Institution(s)

Bulgaria 237 2.30 ULSIT, Sofia

China 1165 11.32 Sun Yat-Sen University; Peking University Croatia 232 2.25 University of Zagreb

Finland 681 6.62 Oulu University

France 1630 15.84 Universite´ Paris Descartes—IUT Israel 135 1.31 Bar-Ilan University

Italy 1007 9.78 Universitàdi Bologna Latvia 1192 11.58 Latvijas Universitate Lebanon 132 1.28 Lebanese University Moldova 213 2.07 Academy of Economic Studies

Norway 1063 10.33 Bergen University, University of Science and Technology Peru 208 2.02 Catholic University of Peru

Portugal 262 2.55 Oporto Polytechnic Institute Qatar 105 1.02 University College London Romania 188 1.83 Transylvania University Slovenia 260 2.53 University of Ljubliana Switzerland 170 1.65 Haute Ecole de Gestion Turkey 214 2.08 Hacettepe University United Arab

Emirates

130 1.26 Khalifa University

United Kingdom 696 6.76 City University; London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE);

University of Kent

United States 373 3.62 University of California Los Angeles

Total 10,293 100

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197444.t001

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Fig 1displays the amalgamated totals for device usage andTable 2shows the ranges of country responses from minimum to maximum.

Research questions

R1. What format, print or electronic, do university students prefer for the majority of their academic course materials? The 12-item scale results show that overall, 78.44% of the 10,293 respondents prefer print format for reading academic course materials; 10.04% prefer electronic format; and 11.52% do not express a preference either way. Participant responses show more diversity when asked whether they prefer electronic format for shorter readings.

Fig 1. Reported usage of various e-reading devices among respondents (n = 10293).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197444.g001

Table 2. Ranges of country responses to device usage.

Device Minimum Maximum

Laptop 59.2% (Moldova) 91.5% (UAE)

Phone 20.1% (Norway) 73.7% (China)

Desktop 15.8% (U.S.) 53.5% (Moldova)

Tablet 14.6–7% (Slovenia, Croatia) 40.4% (China)

E-reader 1.5% (UAE) 23.7% (China)

w/Audio 0.0% (Portugal, Switzerland, UAE) 7.6% (China)

None/ Don’t read e-format 0.7% (Israel) 9.4% (France)

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Attitudes towards electronic textbooks are less favorable than print textbooks. Respondents believe that they focus and remember better when reading print, and that they are more likely to employ important learning engagement strategies such as highlighting and annotating, in their favored formats. 74.13% of respondents agree or strongly agree that they are more likely to review or revisit readings in print format.

R2. Do format preferences and behaviors vary by country? Overall response patterns regarding preference for print format for academic course readings are consistent worldwide, with large majorities in every country sample reporting that they prefer print format for academic course materials (Fig 2). Participants reported beliefs about their ability to focus and remember information by format show consistent majorities in favor of print in all countries studied, but small significant differences in rates of preference by country at p<.0005 are present.

While majorities of respondents in all countries showed preference for print formats across the ARFIS items, some small differences in the scale response distributions between countries exist. Analysis by Kruskal-Wallis H test found statistically significant similarities and differences among certain subgroups of countries. Test statistics from the data shown inTable 3, show results from the 12-item format preference scale are z = 730.269,p<.0005, with mean ranks ranging from 3608 (United States) to 6365 (Croatia). The null hypothesis, that country

Fig 2. Format preferences by country, scale total, n = 10,293.

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results will be the same, is rejected. The overall effect size is small, with anη²of .069 which indicates that 6.9% of the variability in responses can be attributed to the country of origin, and an E²effect size estimate of .071 This does not reach the threshold of 0.1 for what would be considered a small effect size [34]. Therefore, this effect can be considered very small.

The findings point to broad consistency across countries in terms of favorability towards print for academic reading.

This international consistency is more apparent in some individual scale item responses than in others. Findings in this study show that worldwide students believe print format is more conducive to remembering material, focusing on material, and the use of learning strategies such as highlighting, annotating and reviewing readings. In total, 72.37% of respondents agree or strongly agree that they remember information best from print sources, and 82.02%

agree or strongly agree that they focus best with printed material. Figs3and4illustrate the consistency of response on these items across national subgroups. Tables4and5list the percentages by country for the respective statements.

Across other single response items, more variation across national subgroups is perceptible.

For example,Fig 5andTable 6show that the percentages of students in Finland and Israel agreeing and disagreeing that they prefer all their course materials in print differ by only 4.1%

Table 3. Homogenous subsets by country, n = 10,293.

Subset

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Sample^a Bulgaria 4030

Israel 4200 4200

China 4213 4213

Turkey 4445 4445 4445

Portugal 4445 4445 4445

Moldova 4456 4456 4456

Peru 4554 4554 4554 4554

Latvia 4652 4652 4652

Lebanon 4661 4661 4661 4661

Finland 4817 4817 4817

USA 5006 5006 5006 5006

UK 5152 5152 5152 5152

Romania 5217 5217 5217 5217

Norway 5383 5383 5383

Italy 5452 5452 5452

Slovenia 5480 5480 5480

Switzerland 5507 5507 5507 5507

UAE 6059 6059 6059

Qatar 6089 6089

France 6255

Croatia 6319

Test Statistic 6.91 14.93 10.092 15.035 7.042 10.363 13.628 15.092 9.598

Sig. (2-sided test) 0.329 0.037 0.183 0.01 0.134 0.11 0.034 0.02 0.048

Adjusted Sig. (2-sided test) 0.715 0.098 0.427 0.037 0.468 0.307 0.103 0.06 0.194

aMean ranks rounded to the nearest integer. Subsets are based on asymptotic significances. The significance level is .01. Larger means show greater intensity of preference for print.

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and 3.8% respectively, whereas much broader net favorable responses for print can be seen in other country responses.

Fig 6andTable 7show responses to the inverse of this question, which appear to be more uniform across countries.

Highlighting and annotating important texts are common learning strategies that demonstrate an effort to engage with a reading for effective comprehension and retention. Among our respondents, 83.6% agreed or strongly agreed that they usually highlight and annotate their printed course readings, but only 24.11% said they did the same with electronic readings.

In each case, format preference is correlated to a small degree with the use of text engagement tools in that format. Figs7and8show the correlation between self-reported highlighting and/

or note-taking behavior and expressed format preference.

R3. Does the length of reading influence format preference? Earlier studies have observed that format preference can depend on the length of the reading, in that print can be preferred for longer readings while electronic is adequate or preferable for shorter material [8,25]. Mizrachi [25] attempted to define what constitutes a longer or shorter reading by com- paring participant preferences across three reading length categories: readings under five pages, readings 5–10 pages, and material over ten pages long. No differences were found between responses to the latter length categories. ARFIS thus asks about format preferences for just two categories: reading material of seven pages or more in length, and material less than seven pages. As illustrated inFig 9andTable 8, participants demonstrate consensus in their preference for print format for longer readings (72.83%). Results for shorter readings still

Fig 3. Responses to the statement “I remember information from my course readings best when I read them from printed pages” reported by country. [n = 10293; Agree/Strongly Agree n = 7450, 72.37%; Neither Agree nor Disagree n = 1687, 16.3%; Disagree/Strongly Disagree n = 1156, 11.23%].

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show that print is preferred, but there are many variations by country as shown inFig 10and Table 9. Overall, 30.7% answered they neither agreed nor disagreed.

Printing out electronic material to read or review involves more effort, time and expense than reading online, yet 68.85% of the students agreed or strongly agreed that they prefer to do so. The consistency of these responses is illustrated inFig 11andTable 10, as well as some variations among countries. Responses to this question were highly consistent across academic rank, ranging from a low of 67.6% agreement to a high of 70.6% agreement spanning first-year to postgraduate students.

R4. Is the language of the reading a confounding factor in evaluating format prefer- ence? Many students worldwide must read material for their coursework which is in neither their native language nor the language of instruction at their institution, a potentially confounding factor in evaluating reading preference. Three statements in this survey sought to ascertain whether participants would be influenced in their responses based on linguistic con- siderations. Responses to two of them:I prefer to read course readings which are in my native language electronically rather than print; I prefer reading foreign language material in print than electronic, indicate that students prefer print for their native language, but this may just be a reflection of their overall print preference. In terms of item reliability, these two statements did not correlate well with each other or with the rest of the scale, which limits the extent to which one can draw conclusions from this data. One statement spoke directly to the impact of the language on format preference:My preferred reading format,electronic or print,depends on the

Fig 4. Responses to the statement “I can focus on the material better when I read it in print” reported by country. [n = 10293; Agree/Strongly Agree n = 8442, 82.02%; Neither Agree nor Disagree n = 1084, 10.53%; Disagree/Strongly Disagree n = 767, 7.45%].

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Table 4. Responses to the statement “I remember information from my course readings best when I read them from printed pages” in percentages by country.

Country n % Agree/ Strongly Agree % Disagree/ Strongly Disagree % Neither Agree nor Disagree

Bulgaria 237 66% 14.3% 19.7%

China 1165 63.4% 8.1% 28.5%

Croatia 232 85.3% 8.2% 6.5%

Finland 681 68.6% 10.7% 20.7%

France 1630 72.8% 15.7% 11.4%

Israel 135 68.7% 9% 22.4%

Italy 1007 79.1% 7.1% 13.8%

Latvia 1192 68.8% 13.6% 17.5%

Lebanon 132 79.2% 8% 12.8%

Moldova 213 76.5% 4.2% 19.3%

Norway 1063 76.4% 7.6% 16%

Peru 208 67.7% 13.7% 18.6%

Portugal 262 75.5% 9.2% 15.3%

Qatar 105 82.9% 6.7% 10.5%

Romania 188 74.4% 13% 12.5%

Slovenia 260 75% 12.2% 12.9%

Switzerland 170 80.8% 10.9% 8.3%

Turkey 214 72.6% 15.1% 12.3%

United Arab Emirates 130 88.5% 5.4% 6.2%

United Kingdom 696 70% 11.1% 19%

United States 373 81.4% 11.7% 6.8%

Total 10,293

Table 5. Responses by country to the statement “I can focus on the material better when I read it in print”.

Country n % Agree/ Strongly Agree % Disagree /Strongly Disagree % Neither Agree nor Disagree

Bulgaria 237 69% 11.8% 19.3%

China 1165 80.4% 5% 14.6%

Croatia 232 88.7% 4.7% 6.5%

Finland 681 78.2% 8.3% 13.5%

France 1630 88.1% 4.7% 7.1%

Israel 135 76.1% 7.4% 16.4%

Italy 1007 86.7% 4.5% 8.8%

Latvia 1192 75.4% 10.6% 14%

Lebanon 132 80.8% 10.4% 8.8%

Moldova 213 76.8% 7.5% 15.6%

Norway 1063 84.9% 7.3% 7.8%

Peru 208 75% 10.8% 14.2%

Portugal 262 79.7% 8.4% 11.9%

Qatar 105 84.8% 6.7% 8.6%

Romania 188 87% 8.7% 4.3%

Slovenia 260 85.9% 6.6% 7.4%

Switzerland 170 80.8% 12.9% 6.4%

Turkey 214 78.3% 9.9% 11.8%

United Kingdom 696 79% 9.3% 11.6%

United States 373 81.4% 14.2% 4.4%

Total 10,293

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language of the reading. Just over 15% of respondents agreed to any extent with this statement;

56.11% of students worldwide disagreed or strongly disagreed with this statement; while a further 28.04% neither agreed nor disagreed. This indicates that most participants do not believe that the language of presentation influences their format preferences, but that a minority do.

Characteristics of participants preferring e-formats. A minority of respondents expressed a preference for e-reading for academic materials. Out of the 10,293 respondents, 1033 (10.04%) had a median scale score of 2.5 or less, indicating a preference for electronic reading, where a score of 3 indicates a neutral response with an average ‘neither agree nor disagree’ to preference statements. In investigating the characteristics of respondents preferring e-formats, we considered the 805 (7.8%) with a median scale score of 2 or less, putting them firmly out of neutral territory, wherein both print and digital formats might seem equally appealing, and into a group of respondents whose average responses indicate a clear preference for electronic reading over print. Of this subgroup, 52.2% are male (versus 28.9% of the total sample), 32.9% are graduate-level students (versus 27.5% of the total sample), and 5.8%

reported having visual limitations (versus 16.4% of the total sample).Table 11lists the countries represented by e-preferring respondents and their proportions.

Device usage patterns across this group exhibit some differences from the full dataset.

Table 12shows how reported device usage among this group compares with both the full response set and a mirrored subset of print-preferrers with scale scores of 4.0–5.0. The most

Fig 5. Responses to the statement “I prefer to have all my course materials in print format” reported by country. [n = 10293; Agree/Strongly Agree n = 6687, 64.97%; Neither Agree nor Disagree n = 1550, 15.05%; Disagree/Strongly Disagree n = 2056, 19.97%].

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popular devices in every group are laptops, with phones in a distant second place. However, those with a clear preference for e-text report more frequent usage of every type of device for e-reading, and are twice as likely as strong print-preferrers to report using a tablet to read electronically. They are more than twice as likely to report using a dedicated e-reader, and almost four times as likely to report using audio reading.

Exploratory findings

Several post-hoc findings from this dataset are of interest. While majorities of respondents across academic levels indicated an overall preference for print material, the intensity of this preference weakens slightly across the dataset as participants rise in academic rank. These groups appeared significantly unique in data subset A, (n = 5145, z = 41.916,η²= .003, p<

.001), significantly unique in data subset B, (n = 5148, z = 38.105,η²= .003, p<.001) and mean ranks for the full dataset are shown inTable 13(n = 10,293, z = 76.858,η²= .007, p<

.001). The effect size estimate for these differences is very small, but the ranks are linear, with smaller majorities of students preferring print format with each rise in academic rank.

24.9% of the 584 doctoral-level respondents in this dataset are sourced from Norway, 18%

from China and 13.7% from Finland. Of the master-level respondents, 16.2% are sourced from Latvia, 16% are sourced from China, and 12.7% are from Norway. As a percentage of total respondents from each country, Israel has the highest proportion of graduate students responding, with 54.8% at the master or doctoral level, followed by Turkey at 43.4%, Peru at 41.3%, Norway at 40.5% and China at 40%.

Academic rank tends to be associated with age, and for this reason we also present analysis drawn from the full dataset related to age inTable 14. The intensity of print preferences based

Table 6. Responses by country to the statement “I prefer to have all my course materials in print format”.

Bulgaria 237 55.9% 23.5% 20.6%

China 1165 80.1% 6.1% 13.8%

Croatia 232 81.4% 12.1% 6.5%

Finland 681 44.5% 40.4% 15.2%

France 1630 73.8% 16.3% 9.9%

Israel 135 41.8% 38% 20.1%

Italy 1007 52.7% 25.2% 22%

Latvia 1192 50.6% 26.9% 22.4%

Lebanon 132 71.2% 16% 12.8%

Moldova 213 68.4% 10.9% 20.8%

Norway 1063 69.7% 17.2% 13.1%

Peru 208 60.8% 22.6% 16.7%

Portugal 262 70.2% 20.3% 9.6%

Qatar 105 66.2% 13.3% 10.5%

Romania 188 79.9% 10.3% 9.8%

Slovenia 260 71.5% 16.8% 11.7%

Switzerland 170 60.2% 22.4% 17.3%

Turkey 214 50% 29.3% 20.8%

United Kingdom 696 68.3% 20.1% 11.3%

United States 373 66.9% 19.4% 13.7%

Total 10,293

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on the full scale does vary in a statistically significant manner by age (n = 10,083, z = 88.004, η2 = .011, p<.001). For the purposes of granularity, respondent ages have been grouped by single years from 18–35, which accounts for 90.8% of respondents at n = 9,356. Those aged 36 and over are presented collectively and this accounts for 727 or approximately 7% of the total sample. While these groups are statistically significantly different with a very small effect size, there is not a strong linearity to the mean ranks by age. 18 and 19 year olds show slightly higher intensity for print preference than the rest of the respondents, yet their response patterns are also statistically indistinguishable from 28 year olds. As with academic ranks, majorities of respondents across age groups prefer print formats.

Discussion Gender

The overall study sample is skewed female with nearly 70% of the respondents being female and approximately 4.6% of the scale score variability is attributable to gender. A higher female response rate is not unusual in survey research [35]. While male and female respondents prefer print at a similar rate, the difference shows up in the intensity of print preference, with female respondents being slightly more likely to use the extreme ends of the Likert-type scale on preference questions. This is possibly a result of female survey-response patterns more than a

Fig 6. Responses to the statement “I prefer to read my course readings electronically” reported by country. [n = 10293; Agree/Strongly Agree n = 1320, 12.82%; Neither Agree nor Disagree n = 2039, 19.8%; Disagree/Strongly Disagree n = 6934, 67.37%].

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Table 7. Responses by country to the statement “I prefer to read my course readings electronically”.

Bulgaria 237 26.8% 49.1% 26.8%

China 1165 13.6% 49.5% 13.6%

Croatia 232 6% 82.2% 6%

Finland 681 16.1% 66.6% 16.1%

France 1630 7.4% 79.3% 7.4%

Israel 135 17.9% 55.9% 17.9%

Italy 1007 8% 71.8% 8%

Latvia 1192 15.6% 62.7% 15.6%

Lebanon 132 12% 72.8% 12%

Moldova 213 21.7% 45.8% 21.7%

Norway 1063 9.9% 76.1% 9.9%

Peru 208 16.7% 54.9% 16.7%

Portugal 262 20.6% 58.2% 20.6%

Qatar 105 10.5% 75.2% 14.3%

Romania 188 8.7% 71.1% 8.7%

Slovenia 260 5.9% 82.1% 5.9%

Switzerland 170 12.8% 70.6% 12.8%

Turkey 214 17.5% 60.4% 17.5%

United Kingdom 696 17.5% 66.5% 16%

United States 373 18.3% 67.8% 13.9%

Total 10,293

Fig 7. Responses to the statements “I usually highlight and notate my printed course readings” plotted against overall format preference.

Relationship is significant with a small effect size (Kruskal-Wallis H = 2,362.222, p<.0005, n = 10,293,η²= 0.23).

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Fig 8. Responses to the statement “I usually highlight and annotate my electronic course readings” plotted against overall format preference.

Relationship is significant with a small effect size (Kruskal-Wallis H = 2,067.093, p<.0005, n = 10,293,η²= 0.20).

Fig 9. Responses to the statement “If an assigned reading is 7 pages or more, I prefer to read it in print” reported by country. [n = 10293; Agree/

Strongly Agree n = 7496, 72.83%; Neither Agree nor Disagree n = 1197, 11.63%; Disagree/Strongly Disagree n = 1600, 15.54%].

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meaningful difference in format preferences. The size and nature of the effect leads us to con- clude that the gender imbalance in the participant sample does not meaningfully influence the overall data trends and conclusions. That said, we also note that among the small percentage of respondents who report a preference for digital formats, males are overrepresented, making up over half of this group while being less than a third of the total sample.

Country

The small effects on overall full-scale response distribution by country point to a remarkably consistent international participant sample. We had hypothesized that educational style, levels of socioeconomic development, and/or technological readiness associated with geopolitical boundaries might influence the format preferences of university learners. However, the data gathered cannot support these hypotheses. The data gathered points to statistically significant but very small differences in responses across countries, and some of the variations that occur in any large, cross-national study must be attributed to documented cultural variation in survey response patterns [36,37]. We feel confident based on this dataset that these factors are less influential to student format preferences and experiences than the university environment, learner characteristics, reading tasks and format characteristics documented across the existing literature. This finding is also significant in that it provides evidence that university student populations sampled in the United States or other centers for research data production are generalizable to a global student population. However, some data points stand out and are worth considering in greater depth.

Table 8. Responses to the statement “If an assigned reading is 7 pages or more, I prefer to read it in print” reported by country.

Country n % Agree/Strongly Agree % Disagree

/Strongly Disagree

% Neither Agree nor Disagree

Bulgaria 237 67.3% 23.5% 9.2%

China 1165 78.3% 9% 12.6%

Croatia 232 82.2% 9.5% 8.2%

Finland 681 69.2% 19.4% 11.4%

France 1630 75.4% 16.1% 9.4%

Israel 135 72.4% 13.4% 14.2%

Italy 1007 60.7% 17.8% 21.5%

Latvia 1192 73.4% 17.2% 9.4%

Lebanon 132 72% 14.4% 13.6%

Moldova 213 72.7% 10.9% 16.5%

Norway 1063 79.2% 11.5% 9.3%

Peru 208 67.2% 22.5% 10.3%

Portugal 262 67% 16.5% 16.5%

Qatar 105 78.1% 13.3% 8.6%

Romania 188 77.2% 13.5% 9.2%

Slovenia 260 75.8% 13.3% 10.9%

Switzerland 170 78.2% 11.6% 10.3%

Turkey 214 71.1% 17% 11.3%

United Kingdom 696 69% 19.4% 12.6%

United States 373 72.2% 20.5% 7.4%

Total 10,293

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First, in terms of device usage, we pointed out that respondents in China reported using a broader range of types of electronic devices for e-reading than their peers across the cohort, and suggested that this may reflect something about China’s educational culture and/or access to technology among university students. At the same time, respondents from China prefer print formats in majorities that are statistically comparable to the rest of the respondents. The patterns of device usage reported by participants are not obviously linked to the format preferences gathered, though additional statistical analysis may yield further insight.

It is notable that nearly 10% of the 1630 respondents from France say they do not read electronically at all, constituting over 1/3 of all respondents who said they do not read electronically across the full dataset. This rate is closely followed by Lebanon, Qatar, and the UAE, whose respondents say they do not read electronically at rates of 9.8%, 8.6%, and 7.7% respectively, all well above the global average rate of 4.3%. France is known for having a fairly robust book culture, with a thriving independent book industry and a high rate of annual book consumption among readers, which might be an explanatory factor [38]. However, this is not the case with Qatar. What do these nations have in common? It is possible that cost and access issues frame non-electronic reading in these places. For instance, France’s 1981 “Lang Law”

fixes the prices of books sold in France and prohibits discounting, even for online retailers, and this policy was extended to digital books [39]. As such, the economic advantages which drive electronic usage in other places may be neutralized to a degree in France, for both

Fig 10. Responses to the statement “If an assigned reading is less than 7 pages, I prefer to read it electronically” reported by country. [n = 10293;

Agree/Strongly Agree n = 2960, 28.76%; Neither Agree nor Disagree n = 3160, 30.70%; Disagree/Strongly Disagree n = 4173, 40.54%].